reat Britain, but
Captain O'Shea is despised."

The question has often been asked, "Who snatched Home Rule from Ireland
just as she reached for it?" Opinions are divided, and I might say
merged by most Irish people, thus: O'Shea, Parnell, Gladstone, Katharine
O'Shea.

Fifteen years have softened Irish sentiment toward Parnell, and anywhere
from Blarney to Balleck you will get into dire difficulties if you hint
ill of Parnell. Gladstone and O'Shea are still unforgiven. In Cork I
once spoke to a priest of Kitty O'Shea, and with a little needless
acerbity the man of God corrected me and said, "You mean Mrs. Katharine
Parnell!" And I apologized.

The facts are that no one snatched Home Rule from Ireland. Ireland
pushed it from her. Had Ireland stood by Charles Parnell when it came
out that he loved, and had loved for ten years, a most noble,
intellectual, honest and excellent woman, Parnell would have still been
the Irish Leader--the Uncrowned King. Gladstone did not desert the Irish
Cause until the Irish had deserted Parnell. Then Gladstone followed
their example--and gladly. Since then Home Rule for Ireland has been a
joke.

The most persistent defamer of Charles Parnell never accused the man of
promiscuous conduct, nor of being selfish and sensual in his habit of
life. He loved this one woman, and never loved another. And when a
scurrilous reporter, hiding behind anonymity, published a story to the
effect that Katharine O'Shea had had other love-affairs, the publisher,
growing alarmed, came out the following day with a disclaimer, thus:

"If Mrs. O'Shea has had other irregular experiences, they are, so far,
unknown to the public."

It was an ungracious retraction--but a retraction still--and caused a
few Irish bricks to find the publishers plate glass.

The Irish lost Home Rule by allowing themselves to be stampeded. Their
English friends, the enemy, playing upon their prejudices, they became
drunk with hate, and then their shillalahs resounded a tattoo upon the
head of their leader. Nations and people who turn upon their best
friends are too common to catalog.

In the "Westminster Review" for January, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-one,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton says: "The spectacle of a whole nation hounding
one man, and determined to administer summary punishment, is pitiful at
a time when those who love their fellowmen are asking for all the best
moral appliances and conditions for the reformation of mankind. Force,